25 July 2011

I stopped in at Borders on Lohr Road last night just to walk around and see how things were going. There are signs everywhere about the closing sales, and the coffee shop is already packed and gone. It may have just been my general pensive mood - almost a minor depression - but it was a very melancholy experience to see the last dying gasps of such an institution. It wasn't nearly as crowded as I expected, but it was closing time on a Sunday, so maybe that's why.

I know that many people decried Borders for killing small, independent bookshops in the past, and I would agree with them. I remember bookstores on Main Street in Newark and McMahon's at Christiana Mall - now you're hard-pressed to find any sort of a decent bookstore in a mall. While Borders was a juggernaut, it was still a place where we could go to touch books and sit down for a while with a coffee and a novel. Tiffany and I spent many date nights at Borders, just enjoying a bit of peace and quiet while browsing through a stack of books that we didn't need to buy.

There's the rub: we don't have much disposable income to spend on books, so we've shifted much more to borrowing books from the library. It's free, and we don't have to find shelf space to hang on the books after we're done. We have plenty of books already and we're trying to pare down - buying more from Borders is a touch antithetical to that endeavor. In fact, I can't remember the last time we bought a book (more than a small school book for the kids); I can't even remember whether we bought it in store or online. Do I have much room to lament the closing of Borders if I don't buy their merchandise? It's not for lack of desire - I'm sure I could spend a couple hundred dollars each time I walk in - but perhaps there are just too many others in our situation.

I do mourn the loss of Borders: the loss of a local Ann Arbor business, the loss of a haven of knowledge and entertainment, the loss of being able to physically browse books. I don't see e-readers being a viable alternative, and while the library is an ideal option in many respects, there's just something different about it.

Farewell, Borders. I pray that this is not a nail in the coffin of printed books. If so, God help us all.